WW2 Convoy Battle

The worst/best of the heatwave now over we moved into the shed for a much anticipated Cruel Sea battle. Having played a couple of games of Cruel seas and expanding the collection last year I had planned a ‘big’ game which would use the Boats as well as some of my 6mm aircraft collection.

The German navy and aircraft would be attacking an incoming convey, the British navy supported by the RAF would attempt to fend off the assault. I was pretty ambitious with the scale of the game rather than using the aircraft rules attached to cruel seas we would be returning to our homegrown ‘aeronautics’ rules for WW2 combat. This meant we would effectively be playing two games at once but with the chance that the aircraft and ships could interact and I had worked out a way for the rules to cross over. It turned into some madness but a lot of fun.

German E boats with the Luftwaffe approach the convoy using the coast as cover

British MTB’s leave the harbour to cut them off ?

RAF Typhoons fitted with 20mm cannons arrive to take on the E boats form the sky

The convoy arrives at the top of the picture protected by (what turned out to be) a very powerful escort of 2 Fairmile patrol boats. In the foreground the E boats sweep in to launch their torpedoes

Ouch the convoy also has a US destroyer which arrives last. Their powerful 4” guns immediately cause a problem. The Fairmiles are armed with 6 pounder guns which were highly effective, but the E boats manage to lunch off a number of Torpedoes

Madness but a lot of fun , my 13 x6 foot table , ships and planes all over the place !

The MTB’s start to engage the second squad of E boats, the two es are BF 109’s after the typhoons

At this point I should say the dice gods were squarely in the British camp this day, the Germans could hardly hit a thing, the British on the other hand were dishing out the punishment, knock the one E boats rudder out causing it to crash into the friendly boat !

After several turns and a lot of German torpedoes quickly launched in the water the Destroyer and the Fairmiles gradually sink the E boats one by one ! You don’t last long in an e boat when hit by a 4” shell !

But the convoy has been distracted by the Eboats while the JU87’s gradually make their way across

In the final turns of the game their swoop down causing a lot of damage to the convoy

But probably not enough to give the Germans the win so the Royal Navy win the day ably supported by the RAF who did manage to cause some damage to at least one of the E boats

As I said a lot of fun what ever the outcome, my only real mistake was not realising how slowly the convoy would move even at full speed I should have started them in the middle of the table but forced the support to arrive from the edge….but thats for next time.

Earlier in the week I also had another game down with George this time giving his beautiful itlaian wars collection a run out.

Beautiful stuff and a pleasure to play

The Venetians has the numbers if not the quality of troops but they just about held out for a close run win

My commander before the majority of his cavalry was wiped out !

The stars also aligned for a change so I managed to get out in the hills

Striding Edge leading up onto Helvelyn a famous scramble in these parts and a lot of fun

A view from the tops looking north, a hot day and my legs are still feeling it three days later

That’s it for this week and catching up, finally a bit of painting but nothing yet finished to share.

Thanks as always for checking out my blog

Matt ❤️

The Tirpitz sets sail…….

Those keen followers will know I picked up a bargain at the recent York wargame show. The Tirpitz in 1/350 scale, the plan was to potentially use this in the summer in some Cruel Seas games or perhaps as an objective for my WW2 aircraft game. Anyway to achieve this I had to convert the model to a waterline model, that done the model was quite easy to put together.

Then onto painting, now as a wargamer rather than a model maker the painting is a bit rough. Technically the red waterline was I think removed when they moved to the blocky camo scheme. But painted just in grey it is a bit boring. I’m also not sure about the deck colour but lots of pictures show it in the 

Light brown and I went with this as it simply looks better. Of course you don’t get a sense of the scale….

Here she is against one of my Cruel seas MTB’s !

and she dwarfs the USS Delong destroyer I made (I might go back and paint the Delong deck as well) any thoughts welcome on this ? It will probably be a while before she gets some table time unless we play a game with my WW2 aircraft.

In other news……

People might be aware Wargames Atlantic have recently brought out a range of HYW figures specifically focussed on Agincourt. The figures are 12mm, I picked up a sprue off eBay to see what the figures are like and if they were something I might like. I plan to paint these up sometime although they are clearly smaller than the Warlord Epic figures but very nicely sculpted figures.

Also off the painting table some ACW shaken markers

And a couple more Napoleonic markers

 

I have several games planned over the next few days so hopefully my health will hold up

Thanks as always for checking in…

Matt❤️

This weeks Chain of command and more ECW painting 🙂

Another good hobby week, (the ‘force’ is strong) first up I travelled down to George to resume our early war Chain of Command campaign. This week having pushed the French back the Germans have to break through and finally the campaign allows the Germans to bring up some armour.

The Germans deploy the bulk of their force behind the small wood looking for some cover to get on the table. The challenge is the french deployment is pretty much hidden in the buildings along the road where they are well protected !

Germans PzIV / 222 and infantry support gun deploy on the left, pushing up the road

I only took a few photos, the Germans take some serious fire from the buildings and the lead squad are forced back, the french ambush the PzIV with an antitank gun but it survives the first shot and eventually the gun is knocked out.

The least effective and perhaps comical parts of the battle were the two tanks who faced off shooting multiple rounds into each other phase after phase hitting but having no significant effect other than probably deafening each other.

Eventually the German firepower started to tell and the french morale started to breakdown. With in the end the death tally being quite unbalanced. The Germans also push forward their 222 to show they are breaking through.

A fun game and hard fought even if the end result was a clear German victory. As always a pleasure to play with George’s wonder WW2 collection. The next campaign battle is a tough one though !

Some painting this week…..

I had one Curassier left over so I painted up another command base.

Another Pike and Shotte regiment off the production line 

And…..another Cavalry regiment. These are Peter Pig Figures, two more metal cavalry regiments to complete before I decide how many more I might want ?

I have also been pondering whilst out walking the Thirty Years War and how/if the ECW collection would need to be amended for this wider European conflict. Obviously the warlord figures are theoretically designed for both conflicts many Europeans used the same ‘Dutch’ system.

My thoughts on what a Tercio would look like on the table.

I would probably need more cavalry and I’m likely to stick with Peter Pig as they match pretty well and have a good range. The flags of course are a problem but I’m thinking if I create separate command bases I might be able to live with the wrong flags after all at 3feet they are actually pretty indistinguishable. I have looked ant how the flags could be interchangeable but it may be too much of an faff.  Any thoughts welcome on other differences between the two conflicts and how to adapt the collection ? as I am no expert.

With Cruel seas on the agenda for the future i was looking for something slightly different and found this kit on eBay at a reasonable price, some 1/300 kits are massively expensive. Anyway a US escort ship USS De Long. Nothing fancy in the paint scheme just grey and some fiddling to cut the bottom off, the flags are made up and the central mast can be removed for storage. The British Vosper shown for scale ! I found a few old 6mm figures and stuck them on the ship as crew.

Finally the rain has cleared for a while at least, a shot of the Penrith Beacon on the hill behind the town. In the distance a snowy Lake District. 

That’s it for this week although I have another game planned for the weekend and some painting after family duties. And some more fiddling with the railway setup. A question to loyal readers should I share some photos of the railway here ?

Thanks as always for taking the time to read what I have been upto 

Matt 👍

Cruel Seas and a painting update

Another mixed bag this post. First up I had painted up a number of Warlord Cruel Seas 1/300 WW2 boats about a year ago, with a short game planned for Saturday afternoon a chance to get them out for a first time. After reading the basic rules through I needed a few bits to help run the game mainly the stat cards required for each boat, these I was able to find on the web suitable for our purpose.

Our scenario had the British Navy attacking the Kreigsmarine somewhere off Northern France to knock out a U boat, 4 MTB’s against 2 German E boats supported by a shore battery.

The MTbs split around the small island, and you can see some of the stat cards to the right

The Germans move out of their harbour

One of the things we discovered during the game was the ineffectiveness of torpedos and most gun firing at long range and with the boats moving at high speeds both sides needed to get in close. The cotton wool represents plumes of water where larger caliber guns have missed their target.

After several turns the British Navy manage to knock out one of the e boats 

The British are then able to target the U boat and with some lucking rolling they were able to knock it out. A fun run out with the boats which gave us a good idea of how the game works. Hopefully we’ll get another chance to play it again sometime.

I mentioned in the last post I would do a parade of my ECW mainly to check what else I might need to get the collection ready for a battle. The photo above shows it all set out, six infantry and six cavalry regiments for each side. A couple of things are now needed….so here they are hot off the painting table

Some more generic command figures 

And some artillery 

I have now completed pretty much all the plastic cavalry I had so I decided to try some Peter Pig figures to complement the collection these arrived and are being moved into the painting queue. Together with some more command figures.

I have also finished another infantry unit which didn’t make the parade

A few Warlord American command figures have also been painted while I waited for other figures to dry etc…. These are mainly resin although the General Patton is metal. All these for Sicily battles.

Finally on the painting I finished this sleeping/dead Spartan who strangely sat on the painting desk for ages

..and yet more secondhand books, I just can’t help myself at the moment.

The battles book is basically fantastic with maps of numerous famous battles with appropriate details I wasn’t going to miss this one.

Even I am nearly worn out by this post, lots going on more battles next week and no doubt some more painting to come.

Thanks of course for taking the time to check through this post Matt ♥️

French Grenadiers and more 🙂

Keeping busy this week on hobby related activities.

First up I have completed some more French grenadiers, these are Victrix figures, obviously in greatcoats. My plan is to have at least enough for one ‘Guard’ brigade.

I tried a quick paint method for these by spray painting them in blue then picking out the rest. It kind of worked but not sure it was much quicker in reality

Like many people ages ago I picked up a couple of free Warlord WW2 MTB’s Steve managed to get a cheap copy of the rules so we thought it would be nice to combine what we had and at least have a small test game sometime, so I set to constructing and painting them. Above the German fleet

Here are the British MTB’s at 1:300 scale the painting is very quick and simple, I’m going to add some colour identification to make them easier to spot on the table ?

I spent ‘most’ of Wednesday down at George’s to continue our Konigsberg campaign, the Germans haven’t been doing too well, and with out reserves they were starting this battle well behind. The table setup was against them as well with lots of open ground and an objective at the furthest point from their table edge. But I was determined to at least give it a go. We even planned for an another game incase the Germans assault just failed and it was game over in an hour ! The Germans have lots a whole section in the campaign so far so only start with two sections as support we squeezed to a dug in MG42 team and a Panther Tank. It was quite a long game so no blow by blow report…….just a couple of snaps I took of George’s lovely collection.

One German squad did manage to advance down the railway upto the buildings but eventually were cut down by machine gun fire 

The rest of the Germans dug in with fire support, the Germans had both junior commanders wounded early on as well.

But somehow they ground out a win, we were on only three morale for ages but managed to catch the Russian commander who had joined an infantry section they were pinned down and then forced to retreat taking the commander with them, this severely hampered the Russian command and when another junior leader was killed suddenly the Germans had the upper hand. A rare and welcome win in the campaign. For the next battle with the Panzergrenadiers almost wiped out the Germans will switch to a Heer section but from now on the Russian can’t automatically replace loses so it will be a more even fight.

Finally I ordered some more larger/deeper storage boxes for my Napoleonic infantry this allows me to store the units with their flags etc which is much easier. This gave the opportunity for a British/allied army parade. And here they are…..very happy with these so far. To add to this are a couple more British infantry regiments and a highland regiment. That will be enough redcoats I think. I also have the Spanish brigade to fill out, another heavy cavalry regiment and another unit of Hussars who will form the KGL. I probably need a couple more commands. This should bring the British upto four good brigades or five at a pinch with the Spanish brigade in support.

Right that’s it for this morning….I'm off to play Xeno rampant today in a mini campaign😂

Matt